You know what deserves a comeback story? RSS feeds, that’s what. And RSS feeds in Mastodon, and the Fediverse at large, open up a lot of opportunities.
If you don’t remember what happened around year 2006 or so, well, everybody started blogging and there were so many RSS readers, blogrolls, etc.
Many, in and outside the Fediverse, have been pushing the idea that RSS has been neglected for far too long. I tend to agree. Seriously, with RSS, you can curate what kind of content you want to see or read, instead of relying on an algorithm, the kind that big social networks use to « monetize » you.
What is RSS?
If you’re wondering what RSS is, there are a few very good videos about it on the Fediverse such as this one: « Stop using social media for news, RSS is much better » by @thelinuxexperiment.
RSS feed readers basically let you follow websites as if they were social media accounts.
On your prefered RSS app (there are still many!), you just add a feed address and whenever a new post is published to the feed, it will appear automatically in your reader.
By adding and following feeds from interesting sources (blogs, news organizations and now many sources in the Fediverse), you will end up with a timeline of interesting articles to browse through and to select for your reading pleasure.
TL;DR it’s like curating your own news service.
And yes, Google had a good reader, and killed it, and created other tools like FeedBurner, as well as the ideas around RSS at the same time. Long read:The Rise and Demise of RSS (Vice News archived) « Before the internet was consolidated into centralized information silos, RSS imagined a better way to let users control their online personas.«
In 2022, Techdirt called the discontinuation of Google Reader « one of the defining moments in the shift from a more distributed, independent web to one that is controlled by a few large companies. »
And, the federated universe, known as Fediverse, might signal the start of a real comeback.
RSS feeds in Mastodon
As each Mastodon profile can become its own RSS feed, usually by adding .rss at the end of the full profile’s URL, you can subscribe to those you want directly in your preferred reader, without using the regular timeline in the application’s interface.
The syntax is: https://[instance]/@[username].rss
Your instance has to be configured to allow RSS feeds. If it doesn’t work, check with the administrator of your Mastodon server.
Anybody who wants to see my Mastodon posts without having to visit my page, can add that link to their favorite RSS reader and get access to my public posts this way.
This also means that any Mastodon account can be followed by non-members through RSS readers…
There are lots of ways you can use RSS on the Fediverse, besides following Mastodon profiles. For example:
Follow any PeerTube account or channel by clicking the options menu next to the Subscribe button and selecting RSS.
Pixelfed offers Atom feeds by default for public profiles, unless an account disabled this option for privacy reasons.
If you are on a Friendica server, you can use it as a feed reader. Paste an RSS feed address in the search box: that feed’s posts will appear in your home timeline.
There are probably more I’m not aware of, so please add a comment below if you know other interesting use cases in the Fediverse.
And on Mastodon itself, there are even more options than just following profiles:
You can follow federated tags, such as masto.ai/tags/caturday.rss (replace « caturday » by any usual hashtag you’re interested in and of course, you can use a different instance to get the posts from).
Techdirt is one of the few remaining independent blogs. And, in many ways, I really miss the era of independent blogging that became a thing mainly in the early 2000s. Over time, most people have m…
📨 You know what deserves a comeback story? RSS feeds, that’s what. And RSS feeds in Mastodon, and the Fediverse at large, open up a lot of opportunities.
If you don't remember what happened around year 2006 or so, well, everybody started blogging and there were so many RSS readers, blogrolls, etc.
Can you follow rss feeds you're interested in and see them in your timeline with your favorite mastodon client ? Would you know about some solution to do that ?
Thomas lissajoux
Als Antwort auf Didier J. MARY • • •is the reverse possible ?
Can you follow rss feeds you're interested in and see them in your timeline with your favorite mastodon client ?
Would you know about some solution to do that ?
Thomas lissajoux
Unbekannter Ursprungsbeitrag • • •